PIPBoy3000

I'm starting to worry about the "adding new areas" aspect. I suspect it's going to require some 3D modeling skills to generate occlusion/walkmesh data.

This has been an interesting discussion to follow. I suspect that Obsidian plans on creating very large textures as part of the art process, and then will size it down according to various technology limitations (bandwidth, DVDs, compression, etc.). There will also be an upper "art" limit where the artists take the high-resolution render and apply their touch-up work - scaling it up from this art limit won't produce any more detail. I'm guessing they have some resolutions in mind, but might work at twice that resolution to give themselves some breathing room should things change. I suspect that even if the DVD and standard download package contains somewhat low-res backgrounds, they'll give people the opportunity to download higher resolution backgrounds if they'd like.

I was in on the NWN2 beta toolset program, and the Obsidian folks were great about helping out and answering questions. Admittedly the toolset is a big focus of NWN2 and not so much for PE. My hope is that we can get: A scripting reference. Sample map files. Dialog information (e.g. tokens, conditional responses, script actions, etc.) With luck they may have some of those things already. I'd love to get started with writing dialog and mapping if at all possible. Shadowlords worked great, as I prepared for a year and cranked out the modules once per month after NWN1 was released.

I'm sure they're thinking about it, especially when it comes to mod support. The challenge is that a year and a half development time is crazy aggressive.

$110 seemed a little steep for beta access. It's weird that I'd have to pay more so that I can create more value for the game by making mods for it. Then again, it would be weird if I got beta access for the low pledge, just because I'm special. Whatever. I'll take what I can get. Getting early toolset access to NWN2 was very helpful. I remember cranking out the card game thingie right at the release date.

Yeah. I'm hoping I can come up with a good area building process. The first part of that is creating backgrounds. My current thinking is to try to use NWN2 as a starting point, and perhaps skew and blend screenshots of the area to create an orthographic projection. My other worry is that once you have the background, it needs to have additional elements added - walkable areas, lighting, and how the background may either go in front of or behind the player (thinking about the posts as you cross the bridge in the screenshot). Then there's the addition of 3D placeables, particle effects/animations, and water. If that ends up being overly cumbersome, it may make it exceptionally difficult to create new areas. That brings the modding potential down considerably.

I suspect there's going to be some sort of scripting language, utilities for creating dialog, and some kind of map creation pipeline (the screenshots were cool, though I'd like to know more details about walkmeshes and such). I think it's all quite early to know what sort of tools they'll be able to make for us. If we could get some tidbits on the scripting language and commands, that would be great.

Ah - thanks for the clarification. Now I need to figure out the best way to generate orthagonal maps.

One of the things that modders can do early is start putting together area maps. It's a fairly complicated process, and could easily take a good chunk of the upcoming year. One of the challenges is to make sure we're using the "correct" isometric camera angle. Traditionally, it's a 45 degree rotation around the vertical axis, and a 35.264 degree rotation around the horizontal axis. After doing some research, it sounds like Baldur's Gate and the Temple of Elemental Evil both used a 45 degree rotation around the horizontal. Looking at the screen shot, I'm guessing you're using a 35.264 degree angle. It would be great if we could get some confirmation.

I could see dynamic lighting on the 3D models, though I don't think they could have mobile lighting like torches if the backgrounds are touched-up in Photoshop. I suspect their art pipeline is: * Create the models for the area. * Place them down in a modeling program. * Add lights. * Render the background. * Touch up in an editing program. Then when it comes time to make maps, they'll do something like: * Import the 2D art background. * Add interactive 3D elements (e.g. chests, doors, creatures, etc.) * Add lights for the 3D models. * Add walkmesh, define blocking areas, etc.

Project Eternity is the first game in a long while to get me excited about modding again. At the moment, I'm just trolling for details, though I don't think there will be any for awhile. Assuming it is possible, it sounds like we have a good year and a half to write dialog, create map backgrounds, and write out pseudo scripting code. It would be great if we could find out more about the scripting engine, how dialog works, and map details.

Good news on the "Eliminate the errors caused by transitioning with familiars summoned." bug. I've been struggling all week to get Dark Waters 2 ready for release. People started to report random crashes and we nailed it down to when a companion in the party had an animal companion summoned and a module transition occurs. It seemed to only happen with MotB as well. I may just add in a workaround where I unsummon the creature before each module transition.

I've had good luck importing NWN1 models. There's a few "gotchas" to consider: Objects made from multiple meshes should have like-material meshes attached into one. I think there's a ceiling of 32 different meshes per object. Make sure you name each mesh something completely unique (not just in the mesh, but across all meshes in the game). Otherwise you'll get duplicates of other meshes with the same name. Transparency seems to be a little weird. I'm still sorting out how alpha meshes work. There's other things, from naming conventions to collision boxes. Hopefully someone has started a Wiki somewhere about it . . .

Bug tracking is a funny business. I initially built a bug tracker from scrach to manage Dark Waters testing. More often than not, it ended up being cumbersome, and I've lately switched back to forum postings. If the number of testers and developers is small, I think I prefer the informal approach.

This is great stuff, all around. I'm especially excited about the GUI changes. I'm going to have to go back and rewrite the Pirate Cards module so it no longer overrides the default .ini file. Having labels in the 2da files is going to be nice as well. I'm having a hard time remembering which of the eight appearances with the same name is the correct one.

I'll admit that romance was almost an afterthought for Shadowlords, though I had fun emphasizing it more for Dreamcatcher. What was surprising is that people really got excited about it and it was the one distinguishing thing mentioned every time the modules were reviewed. I bowed to popular demand and am making sure it's one of the story elements for Dark Waters. I'm going for just two NPCs that can be romanced, but trying really hard to keep it meaningful and interesting. Keeping the pace slow is important to me too. It's the journey, not the destination, that matters the most.

I'm trying to keep my options open when deciding whether or not my next campaign should be for Dragon Age or NWN2. Just poking around at this point.